


The Showdown After the Execution

by Kamato



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Carl is a good boy, Dream SMP but make it fantasy, Exposition, Not a video game, One Shot, Techno V. Quackity, Technoblade's Trial, just far too much exposition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29045076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamato/pseuds/Kamato
Summary: So, my sister has turned me into the second worst kind of person: a Dream SMP fan. I felt the need to write this one shot, so I did. It's Technoblade v. Quackity after the failed execution, only played almost completely straight. Minecraft doesn't exist in this fic; this is a fantasy world. Just one with weird slang for a fantasy world lol.
Relationships: Technoblade & Carl
Kudos: 4





	The Showdown After the Execution

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for this include: politics; blood and gore; unrealistic depiction of mental illness; and cursing. Enjoy!

Two men stood in a tunnel as the entrance closed behind them. One was plated in magic armor, otherworldly grey steel that glowed a faint purple, as befitting his station as the greatest warrior anywhere. His only competitor for that title stood with him, in a once regal, blood drenched coat, his pig’s snout and tusks aching after magically reforming at the end of his farce of a trial. The boar looked to his horse and back to the other man as he sealed the entrance to the tunnel. 

“What-what’s going on here?” He wasn’t sure if it was some residual concussion from the anvil that had, or hadn’t, killed him, but the boar didn’t know quite what was happening. 

The armored man turned back to the seal and said, “Keep your head down. There’s a chest further down the tunnel.” He gestured down the torch-lit path. Then, he undid the stone seal just long enough to step out. And the warrior known as Technoblade was left alone. 

“I guess he doesn’t want to talk. I guess he’s just like that.” He said it to his horse as much as to the countless voices in his head. The two constants in the tumult of late. He grabbed a fistful of his horse’s mane and tried to tug him down the hallway, but Carl was nervous of the smell of blood and the oppressive tunnel. Shaking his head, Technoblade climbed on his friend’s back and urged him down the tunnel from there. 

He kept his head low, the rough hewn tunnel descending just barely tall enough for him and his horse together. Thoughts raced through his mind: outrage that the Butcher Army had come for his horse; confusion at just what the Hell a man who would be king was getting out of saving the life of an avowed, militant anarchist; and the distracting smell of blood in his nostrils. He shook them away, focusing on figuring a way out. 

After a couple hundred feet, the tunnel rose, and then opened into a room of paved, black stone. A sign at the threshold marked it as the “Final Control Room.” Technoblade dismounted, looking around the space. Six chests sat on the floor. 

Curiosity took his mind first though, despite the panic. The chests were each labeled with the titles of different people, all warriors and craftsmen and politicians. One for a man who’d given the order to execute him in the most brutal fashion they could manage, another for an exile, both who he’d fought beside once upon a time. Technoblade opened the chest labeled for himself, though, finding a suit of iron armor in a neat pile: cuirass, greaves, vambraces, helmet, even plated boots. Next to it was a simple leather backpack, and a far less simple pickaxe. Made from the same, glowing purple, dull metal as the armor his savior had worn. Looking at the other end of the room from the one he’d come in, the tunnel continued, but shorter, narrower. Technoblade looked back at the pick.

This pickaxe would make the work necessary a breeze, but Technoblade was on a time crunch. “What I wouldn’t give for a lead,” he muttered, hastily dumping his coat to the ground to put on the breastplate. As he finished buckling it, a muffled explosion sounded from the entrance to the tunnel. “That was an explosion.” His heart hammered again. “That was an explosion,” he repeated, turning back to the chest. He took a quick peek into the bag before slinging it over his shoulder, seeing a couple magic potions, alongside ten golden apples. He shook his head for a moment as he pulled the backpack around his shoulders. If these fools could stop killing each other for ten seconds, they could all eat the food of the gods for every meal. 

Once he had the bascinet helm on, Technoblade turned back to the tunnel away. Looking at Carl’s nervous eyes, he knew there was no way his horse would follow him down there. And judging by that explosion, his executioners would follow soon enough. He had to widen the tunnel so that he could ride Carl down. That, or leave him there, and that wasn’t an option. 

The netherite pick hewed stone like so much hot butter, and with Technoblade’s athleticism, he’d widened it enough for nearly a hundred feet after a couple minutes. “Just need to make it tall enough for Carl,” he muttered repeatedly, swinging the pick over and over. Shaking his head, he knew that this wouldn’t be quick enough. Hoping beyond hope, he set down the pick and went through the pack, tossing aside golden apples in the dream that the man who’d prepared for this had the foresight to pack him a lead. 

Then, clinking footsteps on the stone behind him. Technoblade dropped the pack, pulling out one of the potions at the same time. At first, he was relieved at the sight of magic, netherite plate armor. Then he recognized the shorter stature of the man in it, and the soulless black eyes below the raised visor of his helmet. 

There, stood before him, was a different man. His friends had called him Quackity jokingly so frequently that it became his name in serious contexts as well. Technoblade recalled, once, hunting him through a wood. He’d taunted him with tales of how people had hunted animals in ancient times. It was nearly a game. Quackity’s strength was not in combat, not to the level of Technoblade and Dream at least, but in politics. He had grand plans, and was regularly determined to accomplish them. And that made them adversaries.

Quackity had come the day previous with several other men in armor like his to Technoblade’s farmstead. He’d sworn off violence, retired, hung up his magic sword. And Quackity wanted nothing to stand in his way, even in theory, and had brought his men to bear against Technoblade. If Technoblade had fought them, he might have won, but Quackity threatened Carl at the time, and if there was one thing Techno had no intention of losing, it was his last real friend. So, when the Butcher with his army came to Techno and told him to come with him, Technoblade listened.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Technoblade muttered repeatedly, pushing Carl off to the side and behind him. 

Confusion and shock showed in Quackity’s face. “What the fuck is this, Techno?” It looked to Technoblade like he simply couldn’t believe his eyes that the boar was, once again, intact. 

Technoblade could be good with words, but when put on the spot, he often wasn’t. “Uh, it’s not what it looks like.” He eyed the axe on Quackity’s belt. Diamond edged, enchanted to put more force behind its blows. It’d go through the iron on Technoblade’s body with little issue if he let the man get a solid hit. 

“How the hell did that anvil not kill you?!” The confusion turned to rage as the leader of the Butcher Army let his frustration mount. 

Technoblade let out a rueful chuckle. Glancing to the side, at his pickaxe leaning against the wall, he forced his confidence to return. Fighting afraid gets people killed, and Technoblade never dies. At least, that’s what he told himself and the voices in his head. “Did you really think, Quackity, that you could kill me that easily?”

Quackity’s anger faded for a moment, familiar fear flickering on his face. “How did you do it, how, how did you even do that?” 

The conviction had faded from Quackity’s voice, and Technoblade still smelled blood. It roared in his ears as he said, “You think death can stop me, Quackity? You-you know what, I’ve got a lot to say. I was going to say it at the trial, but we got a little bit interrupted, Quackity.” His voice rose as his confidence turned genuine and the fury rose in him. “I tried convincing you guys that government was not the answer, that government was actually the cause of all your problems. I tried to convince you, fighting alongside you as brothers, and you cast me aside, you used me. Then I tried to use force, and you still formed a government.”

The memories of the withers came back to Technoblade. He had the strength and conviction to fight them enough to bend those monsters to his will, but he’d been foolish enough to believe at the time that the citizens of L’Manburg would flee at the sight of them. “And when I went into hiding, when I retired, when I sword off violence, you hunted me down. You hurt my friends.”

Quackity had rebuilt his own resolve, despite having seen evidence of his adversary’s immortality. “You don’t understand, Techno, you don’t understand what we’re trying to build here.” Belief came to his voice as he spoke to his convictions. “This is not a simple anarchy thing.” Techno saw through him, he knew in his heart that the man before him would simply be another tyrant. “That’s what you don’t understand.

“Techno, you really think I give a shit about the withers? No. No, you are on the hit list, Techno. You are on the fucking hit list.” Technoblade almost laughed at the man’s attempt at intimidation, but he needed to know all the same.

“What hit list?”

“I’m building a country here.” Quackity glanced over his shoulder towards the tunnel he’d come down. “What we have up there is a country. And what we need here is organization of power.” He took a step towards Technoblade, his gauntleted hand on the head of his axe. “And I don’t care how long it takes me or what I have to do to get you, Techno, I am going to fucking kill you.” He nodded, confirming his intent to himself and Techno. “I am going to kill you.”

Technoblade’s voice returned to the low monotone it normally held, though his heart still thumped in his ears. “I just have one question, Quackity.”

Quackity’s conviction held firm. “What do you have?”

“Do you think you’re enough to kill me? Even unarmed, with iron armor?” Technoblade tapped on his breastplate with his free hand. “Do you really think you can take me?” he asked, his tone showing how little he thought of Quackity’s ability. 

“You know what?” Technoblade read the intent in Quackity’s body language and half raised his potion, ready to shatter it and grab his pickaxe. “Let’s fucking find out you son of a bitch!” The Butcher’s fury out-weighed his fear, and he charged Technoblade with his axe in hand, closing his visor.

Technoblade had considerable strength, but that wasn’t what gave him the biggest advantage in his fights. No, his two biggest advantages were a nigh-inhuman speed, and skill from years of battle to put it to work. When the potion shattered at his feet, that speed increased to the superhuman. In the split second it took for Quackity to close the distance between them, Technoblade had his pickaxe in his hand. 

After easily ducking the first wild swing of Quackity’s axe, Techno gave a return with his pick, knocking the smaller man back and opening some space between them as it hammered off Quackity’s breastplate. “Have to use potions, motherfucker?” Quackity taunted, even as swirls of magical energy surrounded Technoblade. 

Technoblade had not the energy or desire to taunt him back. The bloodlust was too high in him as he heard repeating in his ears the phrase, “Blood for the blood god.” 

“I have a pickaxe!” Techno shouted, “and I’ll put it through your teeth!” He charged the man himself this time, knocking aside Quackity’s attacking axe before bringing his pickaxe up in a backswing, into Quackity’s armpit. If it weren’t for the chainmail in the gap there, Technoblade might have ripped his arm from his body. As it was, the blow was arrested with little injury beyond a shallow cut. 

Quackity shoved Technoblade backwards, pressing forward in a furious charge, shouting, “You have done so much fucking damage to everything we’ve been building all along,” even as Technoblade dodged every blow, before parrying the last to the side and swinging at the gap in Quackity’s armor at his knee. Quackity pulled back, so instead of destroying the joint, Technoblade left a deep gash and a bruise. 

Again, Quackity pushed Technoblade backwards. He was already panting hard, bleeding, limping, as the boar in front of him danced around every strike. One good hit, Quackity told himself. One good hit, and the strength of my conviction will push it deep. “If there’s one fight I’m planning to win, it’s this one.” He feinted high and brought his axe low towards Techno’s unarmored legs. The warrior didn’t fall for the trick, hooking his pickaxe below the head of Quackity’s axe and yanking him towards him. As Quackity stumbled forwards, Techno slipped by him, tripping him onto his front at the same time. 

Before Quackity could recover, Technoblade gave a bestial roar and brought his pickaxe down into the gap between Quackity’s pauldron and his helmet. This time, it broke through the chainmail and bit deep. Quackity slammed his fist into the floor. Frustration or trying to bring himself back up, it didn’t matter. When Technoblade ripped his pickaxe back out, the blood pouring from him had sapped the strength from Quackity’s muscles. 

Technoblade knelt, putting one knee on the shoulder of the arm holding Quackity’s axe. There were no convictions, then, no conflict in Technoblade’s mind about going back on his vow of nonviolence, no worry for Carl even. There was only bloodlust. And the need to satiate it. 

The boar ripped Quackity’s helmet off as he gave feeble resistance, and punched the pickaxe down. It’d gone through stone like butter. Bone, brain, hair. That was more like water. 

Technoblade pulled back after killing his enemy, an oddly neat hole left behind in Quackity’s head. Though the Butcher had come alone, Techno knew his little army couldn’t be far behind. He could probably kill them. He might someday. But right then, the calls for blood had quieted. 

The armor was worth twenty times its own weight, but Technoblade didn’t have the time to strip the whole corpse. Instead, he took the boots and the helmet and slipped the axe into his belt and marched back towards where he’d left the pack. “I gotta get outta here,” he told himself, leaving behind the armor as he returned to Carl. “I gotta get outta here. I gotta get outta here,” he muttered repeatedly. 

He went to stuff the armor into his bag when he saw, in the bottom of it, a length of buckled leather. A lead for his horse. “We’ve got a lead. Oh, that’s clutch.” The voices in his head cheered. He shook his head and took it out, rushing to put it on Carl. “Get Carl and leave. Get Carl and leave.” The horse was seemingly calmed by his urgent monotone. After getting it around his friend’s neck, he raced down the narrow tunnel. Blood was still in his nostrils and his ears, but then was not the time to fight an army. 

That would be another day. After copious preparation, after allying with a man that should, by rights, be his greatest enemy. And next time, they wouldn’t rebuild a government afterwards. Next time, there would be nothing to rebuild.


End file.
